Good morning. Amid a sense of growing uncertainty in a volatile word, CIOs are looking to build shock absorbers by constructing more nimble platforms, scaling back their longer-term planning and working with established technology suppliers, a new survey reveals. Among 4,498 CIOs and other tech leaders surveyed worldwide over the past five months, 64% said political, business and economic conditions were becoming “more unpredictable,” according to a report by recruiter and outsourcer Harvey Nash and KPMG LLC. "Brexit, Trump and a new era of unpredictability are having an impact on IT leaders,” the report said. That said, most CIOs “appear quite sanguine about the unpredictable environments of 2017."

The survey elicits a global view, and includes CIOs from companies in a range of industries in 86 countries, including many with annual IT budgets above $250 million, CIO Journal's Angus Loten reports. To cope, roughly a quarter said they were reducing long-term planning, referring to any projection beyond three years, while just over half said they were creating “a more nimble platform” to respond to change. Uncertain times are prompting a growing number of CIOs to re-focus on the “basics” to provide stable IT performance for their companies. Sixty-three percent of respondents cited delivering consistent and stable IT performance as a priority, up from 52% last year. By contrast, 42% cited enabling business change as a priority, down from 43%. Only 21% of respondents said they felt “very well prepared” for cyberattacks, down from 22% last year and 29% in 2014.

The survey also suggests that the role of the CIO itself is increasingly important to companies that confront uncertainty and change at every level of the business and market. As The Morning Download reported yesterday, the survey shows that for the first time in 10 years, more than seven in 10 CIOs believe their role is becoming more strategic, and that the number of CIOs reporting to the CEO is at a peak 62%. Compensation and job satisfaction are rising, too.

GOP operative teamed up with Guccifer 2.0. Aaron Nevins, a Republican political operative in Florida, tells the Wall Street Journals' Alexandra Berzon and Rob Barry that in the run up to the presidential election, he received documents from Guccifer 2.0, the hacker who had tapped into the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Mr. Nevins tells the WSJ that he isn’t convinced the Russians were behind the operation, but even if they were, it doesn’t matter to him because the agenda of the hackers seemed to match his own. “If your interests align,” he said, “never shut any doors in politics.”

MORE TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Sherif Marakby has been named vice president responsible for Ford’s self-driving and electric-car business.

Ford Motor Company

Ford lures engineer back from Uber to oversee self-driving cars. Sherif Marakby's departure from Ford Motor Co. in 2016 for Uber Technolgies Inc.'s self-driving unit was seen at the time as an example of traditional auto makers losing top talent to Silicon Valley racing to develop robot cars. Now the senior engineer is coming back to Ford as a vice president, responsible for the company’s self-driving and electric-car businesses. The WSJ's Christina Rogers and Tim Higgins say the move signals an effort by new CEO Jim Hackett to install a prominent engineer into a key role designed to bridge various departments.

Microsoft unveils Windows 10 for Chinese government. The product addresses concerns by the Chinese government over network security, including the desire to locally store data—such as details on the hardware or applications being run—and to prevent overseas parties from accessing sensitive information, reports the WSJ'sAlyssa Abkowitz. Microsoft Corp. allowed its Chinese partner, state-owned China Electronics Technology Group, to review and inspect its source code in a secure environment, but didn’t allow them to manipulate it, a representative said.

People are ditching their cars for Uber, Lyft. A quarter of Americans sold or traded in a vehicle in the last 12 months. Most opted for another car, but 9% said they planned to use ride services instead, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll. Reuters adds that roughly the same percentage said "they planned to dispose of cars and turn to ride services in the upcoming 12 months."

Maturing PC market hobble China's Lenovo. For the first time in four years, Lenovo Group Ltd. slipped from the top spot this year to No. 2 in the personal-computer market, behind rival HP Inc. Lenovo is shaking up its operations as it seeks to reclaim the title of global leader in personal computers and shore up its smartphone business. Its smartphone unit now ranks eight in global sales. The Journal's Kathy Chu reports how the company is restructuring and installing new management in China to better compete against rivals in a market known for fierce cost-cutting in both personal computers and mobile phones.

Quant programs push ETFs. Money manager Blackrock Inc. and advertising firm WPP PLC are developing a new advertising system that uses sentiment analysis from messages on Twitter Inc. and other data to help determine when to advertise specific funds in its vast lineup of exchange-traded funds. “The same value we get on the investing side from big data and algorithms and looking at trends and responding to them—we’d like to do that on the advertising side,” Jennifer Grancio, head of global business development at BlackRock’s iShares ETF business, tells the Journal's Sarah Krouse.

Mexico auto maker working on electric car. Addressing Mexico City's notorious air pollution, Giant Motors, an automaker partially owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, is teaming up with electric vehicle maker Moldex as well as four universities to develop an electric taxi. Elias Massri, Giant's CEO, tells Reuters that the goal is to develop an environmentally friendly car to replace the city's registered cabs.

Zuckerberg asks students to address battle of ideas. Speaking at Harvard's commencement, Facebook Inc. CEO Mark Zuckerberg said new societal pressures, including technology and automation, run the risk of sending more people towards embracing isolationism and authoritarianism, Bloomberg reports. “There’s pressure to turn inwards,” Mr. Zuckerberg said. “This is the struggle of our time. This is not a battle of nations, it is a battle of ideas.” Mr. Zuckerberg, who dropped out of Harvard in 2004, is the youngest person to deliver a commencement speech there. Quartz posts the full speech.

Could Facebook also be a problem? A study recently published in the American Journal of Epidemiology finds that the more people use Facebook, the less healthy they are and the less satisfied with their lives.

Tanium lets staff, chairman cash out for $100 million. Following a spate of negative publicity cybersecurity startup Tanium Inc. has created a liquidity event that allows its employees, early investors and co-founder to cash out. The company characterized the deal as a $100 million round, at an increase in valuation. Josh Cook, a partner at law firm Gunderson Dettmer, tells the Journal's Cat Zakrzewski said that it is “misleading” for the company to say in its press release that its valuation increased since the cash coming in is going back out to buy shares from employees. In April The Wall Street Journal reported Tanium exposed a California hospital’s network during demonstrations of the startup’s software.

Appian shares leap 35% after IPO. Shares of Appian Corp., a maker of software for developing enterprise applications, jumped to $16.22 after its initial public offering Thursday, the WSJ's Olga Razumovskaya reports. The IPO follows the offerings of several other enterprise software companies, including MuleSoft Inc. and Okta Inc., in 2017.

WHAT YOUR CEO IS READING

Use of augmented reality, such as Snapchat’s World Lenses, is on the increase.

SNAPCHAT

Tweeting your way to the top. How can one be successful in business if one does not dominate social media? That appears to be a 21st Century problem that a number of businesspeople are paying to fix. For $25,000 a month VaynerMedia LLC transforms the daily business rituals of nutrition company executive Tom Bilyeu into slick five-minute reality show video broadcasts for YouTube and Facebook. Smaller “tidbits” are packaged into "gauzy" posts on Instagram. “The whole goal entirely is to build my personal brand,” Mr. Bilyeu tells Businessweek’s Max Chafkin. VaynerMedia’s clients include executives from General Electric Co. and Microsoft Corp.

AI hacker on line one. Artificial intelligence when employed in cybersecurity allows for networks to detect traffic anomalies faster, shortening the defense response times. But machines that can be taught like humans can also be tricked like humans, cyber experts tell the FT’s Shannon Bond. AI and security expert Roman Yampolskiy, a professor at the University of Louisville, says that hackers can train an AI security system to treat anomalies as normal. The process is called “behavioral drift,” he says.

In the future, the computer disappears. “Personal computers are just too hard to use, and it’s not your fault,” read the first line of Walt Mossberg’s first tech column, way back on Oct. 17, 1991, in The Wall Street Journal. In the years since, “products have gotten more reliable and easier to use, and the users more sophisticated,” he writes in his Thursday story for the Verge, his last as a weekly columnist, he says. But Mr. Mossberg won't log off before preparing readers for what comes next. "Technology has been a great thing, but it’s been too unnatural, an add-on to life, for 40 years. What’s going on in the labs has the promise to change that,” he writes. Work today in AI, augmented reality, self-driving cars, wearables and all that magic stuff will lay the foundation for what Mr. Mossberg calls "ambient computing," or the "transformation of the environment all around us with intelligence and capabilities that don’t seem to be there at all.”

Best Buy, the electronics giant left for dead a few years ago, is bucking America’s retail slump by turning its cavernous stores from a potential drag on its business into a way to fend off Amazon.(WSJ)

The Morning Download is edited by CIO Journal’s Tom Loftus and cues up the most important news in business technology every weekday morning. Send us your tips, compliments and complaints. You can get The Morning Download emailed to you each weekday morning by clicking http://wsj.com/TheMorningDownload.